“How could I… have forgotten this… Urgh.”
His head felt like it was going to split. Jaehee clutched his head and dry heaved.
Why had he… thought Mom was alive all this time?
Then who was the person he had been talking to…?
He hadn’t seen Mom’s face, but he had called and texted… Ah! Aunt.
A face came to mind belatedly.
He had completely forgotten about his aunt’s existence and only now could remember her. They used to play together often when he was young, so how could he have forgotten her this much?
– Jaehee. Jaehee. Are you going to abandon Mom again?
Mom’s voice kept ringing in his ears. He bit his lip and clenched his fist. He had just realized this was someone’s wicked scheme. But even so, he couldn’t pull himself together. Every time Mom called his name, his heart wavered like a leaf shaking in a typhoon.
Along with the headache, he kept dry heaving. Through the splitting headache, he thought he heard someone else’s voice, not Mom’s, but he couldn’t tell who it was.
From somewhere, far away, he heard something like a dog barking.
* * *
“Jaehee! Jaehee!”
The moment Jeongwoo saw Jaehee collapsed, he felt like he was half losing his mind.
Enduring until the end time of the Night of the Dead mission was truly superhuman patience. If Blazing Flame hadn’t stopped him in the middle, Jeongwoo might have abandoned the mission and run to Jaehee.
Blazing Flame was the poisoned chalice Jeongwoo had drunk, and also Jeongwoo’s brake.
But all of that was only until he saw Jaehee unconscious. The moment he saw Jaehee lying there having lost consciousness, his insides turned over.
“What on earth happened? Does it make sense that no one knew until a person got to this state?”
“I’m sorry. We were dealing with the attack and didn’t think this far. Since he said he was tired and went into the office, we thought he was resting.”
Looking at the collapsed Jaehee, Jeongwoo felt like his blood was boiling backwards.
Why do you always show me this side of yourself?
“…What happened with the attack? I heard that all the attacks were handled well.”
“There was a second attack. In a way, the first attack seems to have been bait. The first attack was from outside the building, so some of our combat team was outside. And since the Night of the Dead was almost over, we thought there wouldn’t be any more attacks, so it’s true that our guard was down.”
“…Were there casualties?”
“Fortunately, no. There were some injured among the civilians, but it’s treatable with potions. Some of the Awakened Ones also suffered damage, but it’s not to the extent you need to worry about.”
Kim Jisu glanced at Jeongwoo and lowered her eyes.
Kim Jisu had long noticed that Jeongwoo was pretending to be meek, but she didn’t know he would change this much when Jaehee wasn’t around. If those who had looked down on Jeongwoo as just a twenty-year-old kid saw him now, they wouldn’t even be able to make eye contact.
Jeongwoo was clearly angry and furious, but the temperature was so cold that Kim Jisu felt chilled. Even though Woo Jeongwoo was looking at her, a fellow guild member, there wasn’t a bit of friendly feeling. Should she be thankful that it wasn’t hostile? Meeting those mineral-like eyes made her knees weak as if facing a predator.
Those were eyes that didn’t see people as the same humans as himself. Kim Jisu pressed her palely trembling lips tightly shut with her last remaining pride.
“What did you do with the attackers?”
At Jeongwoo’s question, Kim Jisu flinched and panicked without realizing it. It felt like the moment she told him, the attackers would become dead men.
“Th-the attackers were handed over to the Management Bureau for now. That’s why Yumi-ssi is at the Management Bureau right now…”
“I see.”
Kim Jisu stuttered without realizing it and avoided Jeongwoo’s eyes. Kim Jisu envied Yang Yumi who had escaped to the Management Bureau.
“You don’t need to be so tense. I have no intention of doing anything to those bastards. Even if we torture them, we won’t be able to get the necessary information. Those bastards must all be people who entered as subjects of Eternal Guild.”
“What? Yes. That’s right. Once the King’s Veil is deployed, subjects of other kings can’t enter. So we were thinking we should stop automatic enrollment now…”
Kim Jisu couldn’t continue her words while looking at Jaehee who couldn’t regain consciousness.
There had been talk of stopping automatic enrollment for a while now. But keeping enrollment open was Jaehee’s will.
Last night, after Jaehee went in to rest, there was a second attack. After the first attack, they had strengthened security outside the building, and as a result, there were hardly any combat personnel inside the building. The second attack began then. Not from the outside where security was strengthened, but from inside.
They only let people into the building after confirming their identity, so they couldn’t understand how they got in. Though she didn’t tell Jeongwoo everything, the second attack caused more damage than the first.
Most of the combat members were outside strengthening security after the first attack. Those remaining in the building were non-combat personnel including supporters and civilians. Fortunately, the attackers’ skills weren’t very good either. Just when she thought they had barely won while struggling, Kim Jisu saw Jaehee collapsed in the guild master’s office.
“Could it be that the second attack was carried out to prevent us from recovering after the guild master collapsed?”
Kim Jisu was startled by her own words.
“Probably so.”
“Th-then what do we do? We need to wake the guild master quickly… H-how… Our guild master.”
At first, they thought Jaehee had simply fainted or was sleeping and tried everything to wake him. They shook him, made loud noises. At the end, they even tried some medicine said to wake up unconscious people, but it was all useless. It wasn’t ordinary sleep.
“I’ll… somehow do something. I won’t leave Jaehee like this…”
Jeongwoo looked at the collapsed Jaehee and bit his lip hard enough to draw blood. He felt like smashing all the humans here to pieces.
What do humans matter? The only thing important to him was Jaehee.
But these damn humans had made Jaehee like this again, hadn’t they?
Following the last life, they were doing the same thing this time too. Attacking Jaehee, hurting him, making him in danger.
Shouldn’t he just kill them all? If he eliminated them all…? Then couldn’t he live happily with Jaehee instead?
It felt like the reason that had been suppressing his violent instincts moment by moment was snapping.
“Ugh, uuugh…”
At the groan Jaehee let out, Jeongwoo came to his senses. Even while unconscious, Jaehee was breaking out in cold sweat and groaning. Jeongwoo watched for a moment, then wiped the beads of sweat on Jaehee’s forehead.
This wasn’t ordinary sleep. Jaehee’s lips moved. When Jeongwoo put his ear close, he could hear more clearly what Jaehee was murmuring in his sleep.
“M… Mom… Mom.”
For a moment, Jeongwoo’s expression changed. He could guess what dream Jaehee was having.
“I can’t leave him like this. I need to wake Jaehee quickly.”
Jaehee’s memories about his biological mother were twisted.
After witnessing his biological mother’s suicide, he erased all memories from that time. And he thought Mom was alive and acted that way. For a while at first, he understood they went to hospitals and tried to tell Jaehee honestly. But it was all useless. Jaehee was trapped in his own thoughts.
But if Jaehee was having a nightmare now… it must be about that time.
“Jeongwoo oppa.”
When he was thinking of ways to forcibly wake Jaehee, there was a small hand grabbing Jeongwoo’s arm.
Jeongwoo looked up in surprise. It was Yiyeong.
“Yiyeong… Later, I’ll play with you later. Right now, go to your mom…”
“Pretty Oppa said to tell you. Quickly, quickly.”
“What?”
“He said you have to do it quickly.”
Jeongwoo closed his mouth. When he quietly looked at Yiyeong, Yiyeong nodded.
“He said the thought oppa is having is right. But you have to do it quickly quickly.”
“But… there’s no way.”
“It’s right here.”
Yiyeong held out the puppy she was holding, no, the fox Kaengkaeng, forward.
“Kaengkaeng…?”
“Kaengkaeng can do it. Ask for help. Kaengkaeng! Help us!”
Though Yiyeong’s words were clumsy, Jeongwoo understood what she was saying.
As well as what Blazing Flame was trying to convey through Yiyeong, the spirit medium.
